Murtada is a registered pharmacist with experience in community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, academia and industry. He gained his MPharm at the School of Pharmacy, UCL, and has completed a PhD in Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. His PhD project attempted to proteomically characterise bipolar disorder and cross-compare the protein signature in the brain and the periphery. He has contributed to several published research articles in peer-reviewed journals and currently works in Pharma Market Access.
Murtada Alsaif considers a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Lancet Psychiatry exploring the response of different subgroups of patients with schizophrenia to different antipsychotic drugs.
Murtada Alsaif reports on a new nationwide Swedish cohort study that explores the real-world effectiveness of oral and depot antipsychotics for people with schizophrenia.
Murtada Alsaif chews over the SMILES RCT of dietary improvement for adults with major depression, which reports encouraging results for healthy diet in people with depression.
Murtada Alsaif considers a recent systematic review on the safety and efficacy of adjunctive second-generation antidepressant therapy with a mood stabiliser or an atypical antipsychotic in acute bipolar depression.
Murtada Alsaif summarises a recent 4-week long phase II randomised controlled trial of ITI-007 for the treatment of schizophrenia, which contains some positive results for this novel intervention.
Murtada Alsaif summarises a recent network meta-analysis, which looks at the efficacy, acceptability and tolerability of antipsychotics for treatment-resistant schizophrenia.
Murtada Alsaif considers the challenges facing psychiatrists in diagnosing bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. He reports on a recent qualitative study that explores the practical experience of psychiatrists and nurses and concludes that clinical diagnostic practice cannot reliably distinguish the two conditions.
Murtada Alsaif summarises a small cohort study that uses shotgun mass spectrometry proteomic profiling to unravel the molecular pathways involved with antipsychotic response in people with schizophrenia.
Can blood-based diagnostic panels help us reduce the misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment often experienced by people with bipolar disorder? Murtada Alsaif reviews a recent retrospective study that has some encouraging findings for biologically identifying the disease.
